bake chats with Elisa Sunga
the monochromatic visionary behind the saltedrye instagram account
In the somewhat monotonous sea of instagram food posts, Elisa Sunga, the mind behind saltedrye, is a standout taking baking to a whole new level. Elisa has a unique approach, curating her feed with monochromatic color schemes. She’s definitely carving out her own special place in the digital culinary space. I am lucky enough to call her a very good friend.
Elisa first slid into my DMs asking for croissant troubleshooting help. And I, of course, opened the message, meant to reply then totally forgot about it until months later. From the moment we became mutual followers our friendship has blossomed. I am so very honored that she has agreed to chat with us today.
One of the most exciting things about Elisa is her fearless exploration of flavors. Using flavors from sharp cheddar to ube and everything in between. She ventures into a wide range of tastes and textures in everything she creates. Not only intriguing but also inspiring her followers and myself to try new and exciting combos in their own baking adventures.
Hey Elisa, Let’s start by having you tell us a little more about yourself- what do you do!! What are some of your hobbies outside of baking?
Hi everyone! Outside of baking I love powerlifting, gardening, hanging out with my pup @gngrpuff, grocery shopping, foraging, and exploring nature.
Do you feel like there’s ever overlap in your work at program manager at Google and in your work as a baker?
Yes, definitely! As a program manager at Google I work a lot with process, structure, operations, and spreadsheets. These have helped me a lot in my baking because I’m usually taking on really big baking projects that involve a lot of steps and pieces - like the Milk Bar store layer cake project! For that challenge, it was super important that I stayed organized. I had a spreadsheet with all of the ingredients and steps and I bucketed the cakes in an order that was most efficient and optimized ingredients and time spent. These tools and skills have also helped me a lot with baking 2000+ cookies for Christmas and my monthly pastry boxes. I love that I can sort of meld my two worlds into one!
You’ve baked your way through two cookbooks right, The OG milk Bar book and the four and twenty blackbirds book? How long did it take you to bake your way through each book?
For the Twenty Blackbirds piebook, I started going through it even before saltedrye was anything official and just took my time with it. I just sort of fell in love with pies and wanted to try every single pie in that book! A lot of the pies and ingredients are very seasonal too so even if I wanted to bake all of them in one month, I just couldn’t because I had to wait until I found some currants (which are super rare even in the Bay Area!). I don’t think I’ve baked all of the pies just yet - I want to say I’m at about 80% there? Maybe I’ll finish it off this year! For the Milk Bar cakes, that happened during the very beginning of the pandemic and I was desperate for something to do. It became my entire identity and the only thing I cared about doing so I completed that in a few months. I think I completed that one fairly quickly too because @milkbarstore was following along and the support from the community kept me going.
What were some of the biggest challenges in undertaking these projects?
So many! I think the biggest one was overcoming the fear and anxiety of taking such a big project on - what do I mean I want to bake cakes with the most number of components? What do I mean I want to bake all 20 of them? I hadn’t even really baked any cakes yet! But, once I got over that anxiety, I think the tactical parts of blooming gelatin, sourcing some ingredients, and more were new to me. I think the biggest challenge was in one of the chocolate cakes where I didn’t get the fudge component to thicken enough. It was a gooey mess! Still good, but very messy.
Are there any other books you have in mind to bake in their entirety?
All of them! All of the cookbooks that come out are so good. Whenever I skim through one I just want to bake everything. If I had to choose right now, I might say - A Good Day to Bake or The New Way to Cake by Benjamina Ebeuhi. I’m such a huge fan!
You’re also half admin to Bucket List Bake Club with Annabelle, how do you two decide what each month’s theme is? Is it a collaborative effort in choosing or do you trade off month to month with who decides?
We half a draft for the entire year but we don’t decide until the month before. It’s really important for us to pick a bake challenge that we personally want to bake ourselves - we don’t want to be stuck with a bake that we’re dreading! Its fun to have a starting list but also be flexible enough to switch it up when we think of something that we’re super excited about.
What was your favorite bake since starting the club?
It’s gotta be the dome cakes! I went hard on that one. I think I made 5 dome cakes for that month’s challenge. I loved having so much cake around! Thank you, Kassie, for also doing a live demo with us for that month! That was our first time having a guest baker demonstrate a bake. You really helped so many people build their first dome cakes! Its been months since those dome cakes and I had another opportunity to put one together again this weekend and I am in love! I want to make more dome cakes now. For some reason, they’re easier for me than the standard cakes? More dome cakes!
Are there any themes you’d like to revisit and give a little more time and attention to?
I think yes and no. Yes, there are so many permutations and remixes of every single bake that each month is a struggle to finalize on one or two that eventually make the cut from my daydreams to reality. But also no - there are so many other things on my baking list that I would like to get to. I wish we had more time to do it all!
You have a great sense of self when it comes to flavor- everything you make feels very Elisa, what is your approach to playing with flavors in your bakes?
Whenever I bake, I ask myself three questions: 1) What do I want to eat right now, 2) Can I buy this from somewhere else, and 3) How can I make it slightly different and new to the world? I think these questions push me to be more creative and really push the boundaries on flavor. I also combine these with my Filipino and Asian influences as well as my deep love for grocery store snacks. An example of this in my head would be something like: I want to eat an ube flavored rice krispie thing but I want to make it new. Maybe Ritz crackers instead of cereal for a sweet salty situation? Yes. Something like that happens in my brain every time I brainstorm a bake.
Is there a flavor combo you attempted that you really wanted to work but just couldn’t swing it?
Lychee black tea cake! I really, really, really wanted this to work but couldn’t nail down how to incorporate the lychee flavor in. I attempted to make a lychee pastry cream but it the consistency was off and the lychee flavor wasn’t strong enough. I also tried to use the lychee syrup in a soak but it was weird. I was so sure that would work. If anyone has successfully baked with lychee, DM me! Let’s talk!
Of all the things you’ve made in the past month- what has been your favorite?
My double sweet corn berry cake! You can find the recipe here. I really fell in love with corn this summer and wanted every bake to have corn. For this cake, I am in love with the corn cake layer. But, the most exciting part of this recipe for me is the buttercream which includes corn! In developing this recipe, it was really important for me that the buttercream also centered on corn. This cake is all my corny dreams come true - corn in the cake, corn in the buttercream frosting. Corn forever.
If you had to recreate the same flavor profile in a different pastry- how would you do it?
Oooooh! I love this question. Let’s maybe imagine it as a cream puff - I’d incorporate some corn flour into the choux dough and then sweet corn cream of course! I’d also love a double corn cookie bake - maybe corn flour in the dough and then a corn custard filling? So it would be a thick, cakey cookie with a corn custard center. I’m adding this to my list for baking R&D! Double corn tart? Cornmeal dough and a corn custard! I need to start my corn cookbook, right
We all make mistakes and have failures in the kitchen- what’s one you've made that you absolutely can't forget?
Ugh! So many! This wasn’t in the kitchen per se but I recently delivered a cake and when I opened my trunk, the sheet cake was destroyed - a third of the top layer was strewn to the side and it was cracked on one side. A disaster and nightmare all in one! I felt my soul leave my body. Thankfully, the clients were kind and let me perform surgery in their cafe - I used a butter knife to hack out the most broken pieces into adorable cups to make trifle cups and the rest of the messiest pieces into a huge salad bowl for a deconstructed cake situation. With the last half of the sheet cake that was still decent, I used the butter knife to smooth out what I could. Somehow, a baby sheet cake was born. I decorated it with tomato stems, violas, and other beautiful florals. The ending to this story turned out quite beautifully. I think the lesson learned here is - drive safely, bring cake tools, and keep it cool. But also, maybe - practice more sheet cake builds. There’s always more to learn when it comes to baking!
Once again, a very special thank you to Elisa for taking the time to chat with us ♡ Be sure to follow her on IG: @saltedrye
love this interview and the questions you asked!
well this was a delight to read!